


The Art of Foot-in-Mouth and Falling in Love

by Yalu



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Art, Artists, Community: love bingo, F/M, Falling In Love, First Meetings, Fluff, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-25 00:15:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yalu/pseuds/Yalu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam meets Jess. Sam inserts foot. Jess is easily amused. </p><p>Happy fluffy fic in which Jess is an artist and Sam is clueless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Foot-in-Mouth and Falling in Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trojie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/gifts).



> Written for [love_bingo](http://love-bingo.livejournal.com) Round Three. Prompt: Heterosexuality.
> 
> Jess being an artist was inspired by [EllieMurasaki's picspam study of Sam and Jess' apartment](http://archiveofourown.org/works/761986).  
> 

_January 2004_

"Sam, this is Jess. Jess - Sam. You guys should sit with each other."

Sam did a double-take, completely forgetting that he wanted to get a good seat in this lecture hall before they all got claimed like last semester. Brady had snagged someone out of the crowd by the arm, and all Sam caught was a swish of yellow ponytail before he jerked around to stare at his friend. "What are you doing?" he hissed.

"Hey man, you said you've got no one to sit with - she doesn't either. I'll see you at four," he said, and staggered off in the vague direction of the dorms.

The woman - Jess - looked at Sam wide-eyed. "What... just happened?" she asked slowly.

"I don't know," said Sam. He face was red, he could feel it. _Damnit, Brady._ "I think he's still drunk from last night. I'm sorry."

She shook her head, but she seemed more ready to laugh about it than yell. "It's okay. He- he's right, I don't have anyone to sit with. I'm just surprised he remembered - we only met yesterday."

"He's my roommate," Sam offered, since there wasn't much else to say. "I think he's trying to look out for me."

"You mean set you up," she replied wryly. Up ahead the lecture hall doors opened and the line moved forward. Sam ducked his head as they started to walk.

"I'm sorry. I really don't know what's got into him."

"Stop apologising, it's not your fault," she said, elbowing him as best she could with an armful of textbooks and a notepad. "Sam, right?"

"Yeah. Jess- Jessica?"

"I don't mind 'Jess'," she said. "So, you sitting with me? I warn you, I hum without realising it, I'll draw on everything that sits still and I'll steal your coffee if you don't guard it twenty-four-seven."

Sam laughed, relaxed, and gestured for her to go in first. "That's okay. I'm used to people humming a lot and I don't have any coffee."

"What, you don't drink it?" she asked, pretending to be horrified and clutching her thermos to her chest.

"Nah, I just don't have any with me," he said. Then, nervousness getting the better of him in that horrible, foot-in-mouth way that liking someone you've just met tends to do, he blurted, "Haven't found a place yet that makes a good enough-" _not triple-red-eye, don't say triple-red-eye_ "-vanilla latte." (He could _hear_ Dean laughing at him.) "Uh, you know any?"

Jess rolled her eyes, amused, and plopped down into a chair. "Sit down, Sam. Lecture's starting. You can try some of mine." She pushed the thermos towards him. "But be warned - it's black!" she said, and grinned.

Sam sat down next to her.

 

They had a regular coffee date by the end of the next week. Their class, an art overview, was on Monday, Tuesday and Friday mornings, and they arranged to get into the same tutorial session on Thursdays. Turned out Jess was an artist - it was a hobby, but one she took as seriously as her pre-law - and she was disappointed that he was only taking it to fill his humanities requirements, and wasn't going to take more.

"But why _not_?" she asked over a mocha. "Doesn't it mean anything to you?"

Sam shrugged, trying to toe the line between being interesting and being honest. "Well yeah," he said, "but, you know, I don't know what I'd ever do with it."

Jess arched her eyebrows sceptically. "You can't think of anything? All these symbols and imagery - it doesn't inspire anything? You must've at least done art in school."

He squirmed slightly. "I guess I'm just not creative. What do you do?"

"Not really a smooth change of topic there, Sam," she said, but she was teasing. She hesitated, then cleared a space on their shoebox-size table and pulled a sketchbook from her bag. She flipped through it, but kept it upright so he couldn't see the pages that went by. She used her finger to bookmark three, then glanced between them before picking the one in the middle and handing it over.

It was... a wash of lines and colour, mostly greens and yellows and browns - terracotta - gathered in square patches. Designs he recognised from their course were drawn over the top in coloured pencil, and he didn't want to say it, but some of them were really squashed together, like she'd realised too late that there wasn't enough room. "It's great," he said, putting as much energy into his voice as possible. "What do you call it?"

Jess blinked, stared for a full five seconds, then laughed so hard she doubled over.

"...I've just put my foot in it, haven't I?" Sam muttered, and glanced around the cage. Everyone was looking at them.

She wiped her eyes. "Yes," she said, giggling. "Yes, definitely. You're chewing on your ankle right now - ha!" and she leaned over again, arms wrapped around her stomach. She had to force down several slow breaths to get over it. "It's not _artwork_ , Sam," she said when she could manage it. "It's not a finished piece. It's a sketch. A - a thought process to get a feel of what I want to make on canvas."

"Oh," said Sam. That did make more sense. "And you want to paint... grass?" He kicked himself. _Lame!_

"A Midwestern rural landscape, maybe with some modern bits like telephone poles, I don't know yet, but I want to work in the symbols we've been learning about - maybe in the sky or in the contours of the mountains. If there are mountains. I might make it all dry grassland. But I want them to represent the Native Americans without being obvious. It's supposed to be serious without the greys making it too depressing."

Sam realised he was nodding along as he listened and looked back at the page, actually getting it now. "So these are the colours you're thinking of using, and they make a mood, and you use them when you're painting to keep everything... like, looking the same way? Same theme?"

"Yeah. Not that complicated, really." She winked and reached for the sketchbook, but Sam hesitated.

"Can I, uh, look at some more? I mean, will you show me? If you want," he added quickly.

A slow smile, warmer and less cheekily than normal, spread across her face. "Well, would you look at that," she said, impressed. "I'll make an art buff out of you yet. _Sure_ I will," she exclaimed. "Flip through it, I don't mind. Tell me what catches your eye."

 

Three hours later they'd gone through half the sketchbook, missed a seminar on jurisdiction, had several more coffees each and Jess, as warned, had started sketching with pen on Sam's arm just because it was the closest available surface. He made sure to stay very still while she copied it down to paper later and, when he took a shower that night, he was very careful not to scrub it off.

When Jess noticed the next morning, she laughed and kissed him.


End file.
